Dan Dare’s spaceship on the centre spread
of Prog 1 is a marvel to behold, as are the Biogs and the living axe
creatures. Sadly none have lasted as characters. Nonetheless, every time a
Deca Thargo (long-term reader) talks about their first progs, they always
rave about Belardinelli’s crazy designs, and especailly that first double-page wonder, so I think they deserve a special
mention.

Ursa and Zog, Blackhawk’s companions

Nick Stone, the ‘Meltdown Man’, and a host of yugees

Pretty much the entire cast of Ace
Trucking Co, including the rare feat of coming up with two functionally
identical characters, Ace Garp and his doppelganger, who are nonetheless
distinct. For the record: Feek the Feek, GBH (Dead), Evil Blood, Evil
Guts, and Jago Kain all float my boat.

Belardinelli was one
of 2000 AD’s original mainstays. For any given Prog from the very first up
until the 600s, you’d be more than likely to find his pencils and inks gracing
the pages of 2000 AD – the man built up an enormous body of work over a too-short 14 year
span in mainstream UK comics. He was another artist in the Ezquerra mould who could churn out page
after page of excellent material, and never miss a Prog, even for 50-part epics
like Inferno or Meltdown Man. And with the level of detail he crammed
in to his panels, that’s no mean feat.

His Slaine run was characterised partly by some gorgeous scene-setting landscape workWords by Pat Mills

This shows how dragons see people - blood first!
Words by Pat Mills

The received wisdom is
that Belardinelli was amazing at drawing spaceships, alien beings and weird
worlds – but he couldn’t draw people. I’ll agree there is something about the way he drew people that sticks out – but it’s
clearly not that he ‘can’t draw them’. Even alien-fest Ace Trucking Co was full
of humans and humanoids (including the three leads, who might have odd faces
but have pretty human bodies, don’t forget). And his run on Slaine was full of
gorgeous human depiction.

Slaine's warp spasm - one of the first in a long line of beautiful ugliness
Words by Pat Mills

I guess you could
argue that his heroes / normal people tended to have rather bland faces (nothing
that can’t be solved with an eye-patch and a beard),

David Bowie or Dan Dare?

and there’s something
about the way he draws the body in motion that doesn’t quite seem right – and
yet, it often feels right. The
impossible back-handed sword swipes of Evil Blood; Macha’s fatal bull-run in
Slaine, or Slaine’s own ‘salmon leap’; even the incredibly irritating
rhyming-couplet backflipping double-creature Bloo-Baloo (from Mean Team book 2,
may I remind you);

Just one panel, but it really looks like they're spinning, no?
Words by Alan Hebden

Don't even try to work out where that club started its swing.
It doesn't matter - you can feel the hit!
Words by Alan Hebden

Swing it, Bad Jack, swing that ball

It may be wrong on a technical level, but it sure gets
across what’s happening. I think in the world of fine art this would count as expressionism*.
Whatever the terminology, it lingers in my head every bit as much as the
delights of his character and spacecraft design.

One of the first
stories I ever read in the Prog was the second episode of the Mean Team.
Belardinelli’s art is a huge part of why I loved that story, and in turn, the
comic itself. The wicked sneer of Bad Jack, the terrified yet kindly face of
(still human then) Henry Moon, the comic furriness of Amok, the friendly yet
sinister design of Steelgrip the robot, the obvious smarminess of Richman Von…**

What I’m saying is,
Belardinelli can invoke stuff real good. Later on, he did a heck of a job working
up the characters and setting of Moon
Runners, the epic that wasn’t. One wonders if the writers ended up being
overwhelmed by the fun Belardinelli was having to the extent that they forgot
to fabricate an actual story to tell.

The Moon Runners were as bored as the readers.
Words by Alan McKenzie & Steve Parkhouse

As a go-to artist,
Belardinelli holds some kind of record for his Prog count when it comes to Future Shocks, Time Twisters, and general one-off tales (33 individual stories,
plus a five-part Tharg story)***. I
guess the reality is that, at various times, he didn’t have a big long series
to do, but he was too good an artist not to give regular work to. And he always
elevated the scripts he was given, designing characters and grounding them in a
real place, even if only for a two-page tale.

Best surprise robot reveal ever!
Words by Tom Tully

His one episode of
Judge Dredd is notorious for including a drawing of the man’s actual face,
deemed so off-model by Tharg that it was censored, and he never drew the strip
again (although he’s drawn Dredd plenty of times, and perfectly well, if you
look at his montage covers and star scans). That one mis-step aside, it seems
there was almost nothing the man couldn’t tackle. Inferno mixes futurecycle/sports action with gruesome death,
especially by fire. Blackhawk
transitioned from Gladiatorial arenas to alien worlds. Meltdown Man required the invention of a new Earth with a whole
range of habitats and fun with humanoid animals. Ace Trucking Co, at times, felt like Wagner and grant were trying
to outdo each other thinking of insane things for Massimo to draw, such as the
planet entirely covered in wriggling worms.

No sensible discussion
of Massimo Belardinelli can end without talking about The Dead. It’s a bizarre and divisive story that is amazingly
pretentious, but also incredibly funny, and desperately weird. It’s Peter
Milligan all over (and we’ll get to that mad genius soon enough). But it’s also
quintessential Belardinelli. I don’t know what panel descriptions Milligan
provided, but the design of Fludd and his cohorts is a staggering work of
heartbreaking genius, as the saying goes.

Words by Peter Milligan
Crazy background detail all from the tirless pencils of Massimo Belardinelli

May he rest in peace,
and rise in glory.

Personal favourites:

Dan Dare

Meltdown Man

Ace Garp – honestly based on the art alone it’s hard to pick a favourite. Too many Bams, perhaps, with its
mini-Massimo and his whirling companions? I love The Croakside Trip, too. The fanboy in me has a tremendous soft
spot for that one episode where Tharg pulls Ace out of a drawer full of
forgotten 2000AD characters.

Mr. Macabre, a neat-little one-off that has stuck in my mind more than many others.

Slaine: Bride of Crom; Dragonheist

The Mean Team: book 1

Still Life, a blinder of a Future Shock about creation and art that works because
the script is great, but sings because of Belardinelli.

2 comments:

I think the main "deficiency" in Belardinelli's figures is that, even when drawing heavily muscled characters like Slaine, he wasn't very good at making them macho. 2000AD is, for better or worse, a very macho comic, but Massimo was sensitive.

You make a good point, and make me like Massimo all the more, too! Obviously I have a deep love of macho comics characters, but I'd like to think I'm sensitive, too. Makes me appreciate the pairing of Bad Jack Keller and Henry Moon all the more - the ultimate macho man with the world's most sensitive soul.